If computers are linked via a central computer, that’s a client-server setup.

If they are linked directly, that’s peer-to-peer.

OK, lesson over.

The Internet runs on thousands of servers, lashed together to provide information. Businesses have run on client-server architecture for a long time. And throughout many years, there were many walls and fences between free access to people and information.

No more.

Social media is all about peer-to-peer communications – that is, people directly having access to one another. Unmediated.

LinkedIn lets you reach into a company and contact connections at every level. In 140 characters on Twitter, we can interact directly with a famous author. Facebook lets us share a picture with anyone we want, anytime we want. Smartphones increasingly tie us directly together with text, voice, video…you name it. Here’s the big picture trend: immediate, personal access.

It’s a networked world, and a peer-to-peer world. When a business person resists the idea that networked communications/social media is re-shaping how we do business, we need to explain this much larger trend. People nowadays are far less interested in monolithic, top-down pronouncements – the old one-way messaging, and reach/frequency approaches are become passe. Now, in this peer-to-peer world, we’re liberated from that, and free to engage more directly.

Resist social media? That’s spitting into the wind. It’s a peer-to-peer world now.